Share of Voice: What is it, How to Measure, And How Important is This KPI in Your Ecommerce Strategy?

With the increase in number of channels that brands can sell through there is an increase in the amount of data there is to track and measure. But, what are the metrics that actually drive an ecommerce business forward?

Share of Voice (SOV) is a calculation of your brand’s share of a specific category, shelf, or of a specific keyword.

Traditionally, SOV was a metric that measured the share of a brand's advertising across print, radio or TV. With the growth and evolution of digital media - where we can better measure this metric - the term has been expanded to include all forms of measurable brand exposure/mention. Therefore, it captures all appearances of your brand, whether through organic searches, social media, PR, links, website traffic, PPC (pay-per-click) or other means. 

In the realm of ecommerce, we usually look at SOV in a specific category - for example, “How much of the consumer electronics category does my brand own on Amazon or Mercado Libre?” or on a specific keyword such as “headphones,” where we look at what percentage of search results for this keyword is owned by a certain brand.

‍

How is SOV calculated?

Determining your brand’s overall SOV requires some measurement tools, but essentially: you must divide your brand mentions by the sum of your brand and competitors' mentions. Then multiply that number by 100 to find the percentage.

Share of Voice = Brand Visibility / Total Market Visibility x 100

For example, if the metric representing your brand is 20 and the metric representing the total in your industry is 50, your SOV will be 40%

Honing in specifically on digital search, Share of Voice = # of your brand’s items on a search term / total number of items showing on a term. We usually stick to page 1 of results when calculating this metric.

Broadening to a digital category level, we look at the same calculation but for the entire category - and this can be done at the retailer level or across all of ecommerce.

‍

How do I increase my brand's SOV?

Always be active

• Always be present and active on all platforms where your target audience is, whether it’s retail, social, or beyond. 
• Don't just use them as content distribution channels. Engage with your audience, respond to comments, be aware of what is happening in your industry, in the world and in the behavior of your consumers. The American fast food chain Wendy's and McDonald's are examples of brands that actively interact with their consumers, using their own fun language.

Create memorable relationships and experiences

• If SOV captures all the mentions of your brand in the digital environment, there is nothing better than getting people to say positive things about you without prompt. 
• Offer personalized service and create meaningful experiences. A good example is Nubank, which has a completely humanized service that goes beyond problem-solving.

Create relevant content

• Invest in relevant and valuable content that makes your audience want to share, whether educational, informative, inspirational or entertainment. In addition, e-books, infographics and articles, for example, are also great options for relevant and shareable materials.

SEO optimization

• Make your brand easier to find organically across search engines by ranking better for keywords that drive the most traffic to those organic results.

Go beyond the digital universe

• Although digital channels offer more accurate measurement, it doesn't mean that all your efforts should be channelled there in an increasingly omnichannel world. Think about where your marketing efforts might work to drive engagement, for example an event or any other impactful offline action.

‍

Additional advantages of evaluating SOV

SOV is a key metric required to understand your brand’s position and that of competitors in the market, because the higher your brand's SOV, the greater your "voice" or visibility in the market. Furthermore, having a grasp on your SOV allows you to:

• To get to know your consumers through interaction with your brand and to know which channels they use to do so.
• What types of interactions work best with your consumers.
• Evaluate the success of your campaigns and whether the media used have been effective so that you can better direct investments to future campaigns and improve your results.

All brands should continuously strive to increase their SOV across all possible channels (as many of them are connected!), and every channel requires a different strategic approach. Working with a partner like Flywheel to help measure & optimize for this growth can help simplify the process.